


In the orbits of the sun

by winterysomnium



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon, Getting Together, Kissing, Lance doesn't realize he likes Keith until he says it pretty much, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Shiro briefly shows up, anything else to tag?, mostly seen from Lance's point of view, no spoilers for season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: Lance misses home but finds it in Keith.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [varebanos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/varebanos/gifts).



> Written for varevare's birthday, happy birthday bro! ♥ If you're interested I have a tumblr too, it's winterysomnium.

There’s no scent, no scenery, like home.

There’s no planet like the Earth, there’s no star Lance wants to wish on besides the sun, there’s no moon that doesn’t feel like Kerberos: distant, coldest of them all, a bad memory.

They’ve all lost something there, and they’ve all found it, scattered in wiring, in ashes of stars and trajectories of their lungs, bent, trajectories of arms, fired, swept away, gun powder hot.

There’s no scent like the sea, trapped within a morning city, within Lance’s window, underneath his skull.

There’s nothing that resembles any of it, yet there’s Keith, as if he’s made of the elements that wear other’s bones out, that thin the blood within them, as if he’s made to fight against machines born to be fighters, too, as if he’s back in the garrison simulator, a pilot they all have been struggling to become, a confidence running through his wrists Lance pretends to hold but that’s barely a hologram, barely a sketched on lie, grazing his knuckles.

There’s Keith and he’s the comfort of a sound, of a shell pressed to Lance’s ear, when he watches Keith take off his jacket, terrestrial dreams caught within the screen of his shirt, a projection of cotton and colours, more and more washed away, Lance’s own hoodie is fraying at the hem and it feels like he’s weaving it away from his own hips, from the inside of his bones.

He feels hollow, like the castle, like the casing of a bullet, the ruins of its afterlife, the ache of his joints.

(It could be the vertigo of the feeling of the engine, the vertigo of the numbers of Keith’s body, a vision that dips, the fluidity of evade, of deny, of aggression, written off as defense, written off and struck and destroyed, but when Keith’s booths skid across the floor Lance counts with him, one, three, oxygen digging into the confines of Keith’s cells and when he wipes his mouth and scrapes his lip, something in Lance feels at home, feels like Earth hasn’t been lost, after all, something makes him feel as if there’s a map for him, a map for him to find the seas, the borders of his town.)

The arena dims, Keith calls it a day, breathless, and Lance stays for longer, for a few minutes, pretends curfew has set into the halls and that he’s hiding from Iverson’s patrol, something that doesn’t scare him, anymore.

He sleeps in his shirt that night, his Mom’s laundry room clings to the remains of the clean corners and there’s a sting of an aching wound, underneath his lashes.

(He curls into the warmth.)

—

“I know you’ve been watching me. Why?” Keith asks, suddenly, and it slips into Lance’s skin, trails between his feet like the soap they don’t quite share but there’s nothing but tiles on the floor, drains to soak up the dirt of their days and the walls between the showers let him see all of Keith’s feet, his ankles, the bruised shin and when he tip toes to adjust the water, Lance forgets to scrub at his dripping head, off guard, cut out of another reality, from another world.

“ _Dude_ , we’re in a _shower_. What the hell?”  

“We’re alone,” Keith answers, less than a heartbeat after, like they’re not what they are – like there’s something intimate and foreign between them, like they’ve cut a sloppy kiss short, like they’ve spared each other for too long and Lance unknots his fingers, dipped around his ears.

“And _naked_. And touching ourselves in all kinds of places I don’t really want to think about in the context of _you_ and _naked_ and I _definitely_ don’t want to _talk_ and – and there’s soap in my mouth now, great, _god_.” Lance coughs, spitting, gurgles a mouthful, another and Keith’s toes curl, move a bit, tap against the slippery stall and Lance nearly drowns himself, with another gulp of bitter, oily water, backing away.

“The hell you trying to do _now_ , man? Get away from my stall wall!”

“You sounded like you got trouble.”

“No, _you’ll_ have trouble when we get out of here! _Can’t you just let me shower in peace?_ ”

“You watch me train.”

“How’s that any of your business!”

“It _is_ –” another tap, quiet, too loud, Lance yelps: “Don’t dare come here!” and then there’s barely anything, at all, Keith’s side drips off into the arch of his soles and all of Keith’s privacy disappears when Lance hears the door slide open, when he feels trapped within the wingspan of his shoulder blades, Keith facing him blindly, the door between won’t allow anything to be seen among them but then – Keith’s on his toes, again, and Lance freezes, once more, when Keith’s fingers wrap around the top of his door, when he presses up, and Lance pushes at Keith’s face, breathlessly fights the slip of his own gravity, given away.

“I said don’t come any closer, Keith!” he yells and Keith’s somehow landed his fall, there’s a towel trapped against his thighs and his legs stick out like ruins, in front of the secure space of Lance’s slow paced heart attack, the quicksand shallows of his pulse.

“Tell me why you watch me train, then. Because you do _. Have_. For _weeks_.” Keith stands up, against all of that unclear space, uncertain vowels, melting moods.

“I’m not telling you anything!” The nuclear identities, the structure of this secret tucked against the others spills all over Lance’s mouth, cradles itself in the threading of his spine and Keith still stands there, a pillar of burned out coals, burned down forests, the heat evaporates all of Lance’s courage, all of his fight.

There’s something strong about Keith, something immovable, something that dries Lance out into marble, into volcanic slopes.

“I just don’t understand it,” Keith says, unguarded yet armed, never fragile, never weak. “I have to know why.” He pushes through the echo of his own tremble, and he’s softer, he’s the last of a descent, his fists curl and something is going to snap, something is going to break apart, something will unravel but Shiro walks in right before it does, stops at the sight of Keith.

“Everything alright in here?” he asks and Shiro’s gravity overpowers the pull, the force behind Keith’s unanswered myths.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine,” Keith answers, distant, and when the echo returns to Lance, it’s just a little bit sharp.

Everything’s fine.

(If he ignores the melodic, heavy, rumbling ache.)

—

Keith’s shoulder tenses, a strain like a wire that cuts through his thighs leads his walk as the first level begins – it’s off, this silhoulette of him, and he’s faster, too, exhaustingly so, kicking at the robot’s center, stripping him off half of his skull and he looks up at Lance, freezes in the vacant field.

“You could come down here, too,” he tells him and the snap reverberates through Lance’s jaw, something like anger stuck under his teeth.

Lance doesn’t, and stays, like an emperor at the knees of the arena and Keith doesn’t ask again, turns and faces the glow of electricity, the dimming eyes and forgets Lance exists, remembers there’s a sword left to unsheathe.

He only ever asks once, each time.

(Lance always says no.)

—

Nothing changes, but this.

Nothing shifts, nothing tightens its grasp and nothing is looser, nothing scratches across the boundaries of their mutual haunting, just this, just the first of Keith’s descend into Earth, just the orbit, this daily eclipse.

“You could come down here, too,” Keith says and it feels stolen, a part of someone’s unwritten book, someone’s rewritten page, someone’s play, practiced relentlessly through Keith’s mouth and within Lance’s quiet defiance and then – then the snap returns, then Lance surrenders, then Lance gives up the role, gives up the emperor’s crown.

Then:

“You _should_ come down here, too,” Keith says, but there’s no one to fight, there’s no struggle to defeat, except Keith’s own colliding strength, the evaporating atmosphere of his lungs, underwater sceneries, their bayards press against each other the second Lance walks in, and Keith goes and goes and goes and he’s braver like this, closer, unsheathed himself, he’s the machine he’s fighting and Lance is pushed to the wall, Keith’s bayard at his collar, under his throat; all that’s missing is the moment of victory, the slump of surrender, of letting go.

Keith doesn’t, as his bayard closes into itself and it’s Keith’s elbow, holding him, holding onto Keith’s every move, the sound of his teeth when he asks: “Is this what you wanted? A fight?” a resonance of all the things not understood, the rising pulse of their bodies, the falling structure of resolve, it’s when the defeat, the undelivered, sinks into Lance’s skull, into his throat.

“No, Keith. I didn’t want a _fight_ ,” he responds, in somber syllables, forfeits the pull and push is all that’s left, the rebellion’s over, the castle’s open and Lance isn’t afraid, he’s not dishonest, anymore.

(There’s no need.)

“Then _what_ do you want?” the thief and the knight presses the throne to Lance’s back and they push, push, just enough to not hurt.

(They push until there’s an imprint of gold.)

“You’re the closest I ever feel to Earth,” Lance says and the pressure lifts, stays out of reach, at the dip of his neck.

“What?”

“When I saw you train here, when I saw you fly – it, it comforted me. Made me feel less alone. I realized – I realized you remind me of home.” Lance pockets his fingers, his knuckles, into a fist, into a tired curl of his mouth. “And I thought it was crazy, that it was just you being – _you_ because if anything, _Hunk_ should make me feel like that but it’s – it’s _exactly_ like that. It’s you being _you_ and you’re still so _insufferable_ sometimes and still have the same dumb _mullet_ haircut and I guess – I guess I like it that way. I like _you_ that way.” and if Lance expected anything, it was a taste of Keith’s knuckles, it was an impulse, it was _nothing_ like Keith’s lost footing, the soft slip of his hand from Lance’s neck, the stammer on his mouth.

“O – okay. Okay.” The tips of his ears colour, pale red painting his skin, he seems like he forgot how to work, to function, to respond.

There’s a sound.

“I have to take a shower,” Keith rushes out, nearly a foreign language, and for the first time in weeks, Keith runs, runs from Lance, runs to not confront.

(To Lance, it still feels like defeat.)

—

It doesn’t last long. This state of unknown, this bare dirt they’ve dug out, because none of them stay patient if they’re Keith’s, none of them can not burn out quickly, none of them feel resolved, when Lance restlessly fidgets with Pidge’s headphones, because he doesn’t want to fall asleep like this, again, doesn’t want to sleep on his thoughts because all they do is form into nightmares, into shapeless terrors and crackling bones, fires stuck in his throat, burning through his chest.

He doesn’t want to sleep but he’s dozing, giving in to the lullaby of the castle, when a knock echoes through the door, and a string of consciousness painfully knocks him into himself, jerks him awake and he’s opening the locks before he’s battling the dazed dizziness and it’s not Hunk, it’s not Coran, it’s not an emergency, and yet – it _is_ , because it’s Keith and he’s shaping his fingers into the curl of Lance’s shoulders, he’s unarming Lance’s mouth and he leaves no survivors, he leaves nothing untouched, unfelt.

It’s a fast, shallow kiss, just a flicker of Keith’s mouth but it detonates against Lance anyway, mimics the warmth of a good, good dream and after, Keith looks at him, softer, like he’s offered a fist, instead of his palms.

“I didn’t answer you properly, yesterday,” he says, stays; Lance remains, too.

“You mean when you ran away?”

“Yeah,” Keith answers, like it’s the simplest thing, the easiest, easier than anything else he had to ever do, had to ever admit. “I didn’t misunderstand, have I? What you meant?” and it’s _now_ that he seems uneasy, scared. “Because I thought that I find comfort in the things that I love and I – I’ve been relying on you, too,” he says, a feeling clinging to his bones, like he’s let out an insult, like it’s not a confession, not something Lance can accept.

(It’s like the compressed, cold cold air inside of Lance expands now, warmer, hotter, fills all of him in, shapes him back into his skeleton, into his smirk, his roots, his steadier self.)

“You misunderstood one thing,” he says, closing the door behind Keith’s reluctant stillness, tugs on the unzipped horizons of Keith’s jacket, tugs until their noses bump.

“What did I misunderstand?” Keith lets him, stumbles into Lance’s hold.

(Lance smirks.)

“That that’s not how you kiss someone you love, _dumbass_.”

And before his self consciousness can catch up, before it rushes around the corner and drags him away, drags him into hiding, Lance kisses Keith, openly, just the way he wants. Just the way he talks.

(Just the way he thinks they could be.)


End file.
